I Know a Secret

Thirty-nine

Everett is coming for cocktails.

I haven’t seen him since we were discharged from the hospital a week ago, because we both needed time to recover. Certainly I needed time, because I’ve had so many details to attend to: The reading of my father’s will. What to do with my father’s dog, who’s still in the kennel. The cleanup of his house, with its blood-spattered bedroom. Multiple interviews with the police. I have spoken to Detective Rizzoli three times now, and sometimes I feel she wants to vacuum my brain, sucking out every detail of what happened that night. I keep telling her that there’s nothing else I remember, nothing more to share with her, and finally she seems ready to leave me at peace.

The apartment bell buzzes. A moment later, Everett stands in my doorway, holding a bottle of wine. As always, he’s right on time. That’s Everett — so predictable, but also a little boring. I suppose I can put up with boring, since in this case it comes in such an attractive and affluent package. It never hurts to have a rich boyfriend.

He seems tired and subdued as he walks into my apartment, and the kiss he gives me is only a halfhearted peck on the cheek.

“Shall I open the bottle?” I offer.

“Whatever you’d like.” What kind of response is that? I’m annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm tonight. I take the wine into the kitchen, and as I rattle around in the drawer for the corkscrew, he just stands there watching me, not offering to help. After what we’ve been through together, you’d think he’d be ready to celebrate, but he’s not smiling. Instead, he looks as if he’s in mourning.

I pop out the cork, fill two wineglasses, and hand him one. The cabernet smells rich and meaty, and it’s probably expensive. He takes only one sip and sets down his glass.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he says.

Goddamn, I should have known. He wants to break up. How dare he break up with me? I manage to keep my cool as I eye him over the rim of my wineglass. “What is it?” I ask.

“That night, in your father’s house — when we almost died...” He releases a deep sigh. “I heard what you said to Billy. And what he said to you.”

I put down my glass and stare at him. “What, exactly, did you hear?”

“Everything. This wasn’t just a hallucination. I know ketamine can fog your mind, make you see and hear things that don’t exist, but this was real. I heard what you did to that little girl. What both of you did.”

Calmly, I pick up my glass and take another sip. “That was your imagination, Everett. You didn’t hear anything.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Ketamine clouds your memory. That’s why it’s used for date rape.”

“You used a rock. You both killed her.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Holly, tell me the truth.”

“We were only kids. Do you really think I could have—”

“For once, just tell me the fucking truth.”

I set down my glass, hard. “You have no right to talk to me that way.”

“I do have that right. I was in love with you.”

Oh, this is rich. Just because he was stupid enough to fall in love with me, he thinks he can demand honesty. No man has that right. Not from me.

“Lizzie DiPalma was only nine years old,” he says. “That was her name, wasn’t it? I read about her disappearance. Her mother last saw her on a Saturday afternoon, when Lizzie left the house wearing her favorite hat, a beaded cap from Paris. Two days later, a child found Lizzie’s hat on the Apple Tree school bus. That’s why Martin Stanek came under suspicion. That’s why he was accused of kidnapping and killing the girl.” He paused. “You were the child who found the hat. But you didn’t really find it on the bus. Did you?”

“You’ve reached a lot of conclusions based on absolutely no evidence,” I answer, coldly logical.

“Billy handed you a rock, and you hit her with it. You both killed her. And then you kept her hat.”

“Do you think this fairy tale would ever hold up in court? You were drugged with ketamine. No one would believe you.”

“That’s your answer?” He stares at me in disgust. “You have nothing else to say about a little girl who’s been missing all these years? About her mother, whose heart must have been broken? That will never hold up in court?”

“Well, it won’t.” I pick up the wineglass again and take an unconcerned sip. “Besides, I was only ten years old. Think of all the things you did when you were ten.”

“I never killed anyone.”

“That’s not how it happened.”

“How did it happen, Holly? You’re right, this will never hold up in court, so you might as well tell me the truth. I don’t plan to see you again, so you have nothing to lose.”

I study him for a moment, thinking about what he could do with the truth. Go to the police? Blab to the newspapers? No, I’m not that stupid. “Give me one good reason why I should say anything.”

“For the sake of that little girl’s mother — she’s been waiting twenty years for Lizzie to come home to her. At least give her that. Tell her where to find the body.”

“And fuck up my own life?”

“Your life? It’s all about you, isn’t it?” He shakes his head. “Why the hell didn’t I see this before?”

“Oh, come on, Everett. You’re making too much of this.” I reach up and stroke his face.

He shudders and flinches away. “Don’t.”

“We had something special together. Good times.” I smile. “And great sex. Please, let’s just put this behind us and forget it ever happened.”

“That’s the thing, Holly. It did happen. And now I know what you really are.” He turns to leave the kitchen.

I grab his arm. “You’re not going to tell anyone, right?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“They won’t believe you. They’ll call you a bitter ex-boyfriend. And I’ll tell them how you abused me. How you threatened me.”

“You would do that, wouldn’t you?”

“If I need to.”

“Well, I don’t have to tell anyone. Because they’re listening to it right this instant. Every word you’ve said.”

It takes me a few heartbeats to process what he’s just told me. When the meaning dawns on me, I grab his shirt and wrench it open so suddenly he doesn’t have time to react. Buttons fly off and tick to the floor. He stands with his shirt hanging open, and I stare at the telltale wire taped to his skin.

Backing away, I frantically review what I’ve said, words that I now know the police have been listening to. I never actually admitted anything. Nothing I said could be considered a murder confession. While I may have sounded heartless and manipulative, those aren’t criminal acts. There are countless people like me in the world, successful CEOs and bankers whose heartlessness isn’t punished but rewarded. They are simply behaving like the creatures they were born to be.

Everett is different. He’s not one of us.

In silence, he closes his shirt over the exposed wire and I see pain, even grief, in his face. It’s the death of an illusion. The illusion of Holly Devine, the girl he loved. Now the real Holly stands before him, and he wants nothing to do with me.

“Goodbye,” he says, and walks out of the kitchen.

I don’t follow him. I just stand there listening as the apartment door slams shut.

I fling my goblet, and it shatters against the refrigerator in an explosion of glass shards. Red wine drips like blood onto the floor.